Review Index Page 13

Having aced its attempts at speed and durability, Samsung seems focused on solving flash's biggest sacrifices: size and affordability. Its new SSD 840 Evo lineup has models spanning from 120GB to 1TB, with the largest costing only $0.65 per gigabyte thanks to its use of TLC NAND.

If I had to describe the Xperia Z Ultra in two words, it would be 'gorgeously massive'. On the one hand, Sony has crafted an astoundingly beautiful smartphone, combining a slim design with premium materials. On the other, the device is ridiculously large, pushing the boundaries of what can be considered a phone, and making it somewhat hard to use.

Intel is now ready for a refresh of its Extreme platform, but they won't be skipping the Ivy Bridge architecture and moving straight to Haswell. Rather, the LGA2011 platform is getting an upgrade with new Ivy Bridge-E processors.

As a PC builder and gamer I find it fun and incredibly interesting to tinker around with my set-up, whether that's buying a new graphics card to improve its speed, fiddling with the cooling to ensure everything can run smoothly, or overclocking to squeeze out some extra performance.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 is a free-to-play game with optional in-app purchases. But rather than alienating fans of the franchise by locking content behind pay walls or dumbing-down gameplay, the game is every bit as challenging and rewarding as the original.

The miniscule gadget barely measures larger than a USB flash drive, however inside the Leap you'll find two cameras and three infrared LEDs that are capable of tracking hand movements in all three spatial dimensions. Making use of motion-sensing technology to interact with your computer is at least refreshing, if not magical.

Lenovo's IdeaCentre Horizon embraces Windows 8's touch capabilities with a social twist - it moonlights as a Surface (the table, not the tablet) that can be used by the entire family for a "fun night in." The design is innovative and has a ton of potential on paper. But how does this translate to real world usage?

The Lumia 925 is what the Lumia 920 should have been at launch: a device with some fantastic technology packed into a design that isn't a massive, heavy slab of plastic. If you're after a Windows Phone, this is the high-end device you should be looking at, as it's simply the best one out there.

Gigabyte's pint-sized Brix systems come in four different processor configurations, from Celeron to Core i7 variants. More powerful than Intel's NUCs, the BRIX is Gigabyte's take on SFF systems, adding more ports and Wi-Fi out of the box.

Lian Li's latest HPTX chassis is larger than any case we've seen before, supporting well over a dozen hard drives, which should make it a hit among case modders, folks with liquid cooling and other extreme setups as well as professional users such as photographers, video editors and animators.

A lot has changed since late last year when I first looked at the Yoga 13. That system showed that there is a market for convertible notebooks and while the Yoga 11S is essentially a slimmed down version of the original, there needs to be more to it at this point to make it a true standout device.

We've only previously seen water-cooled GTX 780 cards pushed this far. Palit's GTX 780 Super JetStream is no ordinary graphics card, however, as its massive heatsink and three large fans keep its core cool when under stress -- a solution that allows the card to outpace the Titan, Palit says.

Apple won't appreciate my perversion of their iPad Mini slogan, but the Lenovo ThinkPad 2 is every inch a ThinkPad. Polarizing as it may be in the consumer world, ThinkPads have long-donned an inky-black design with well-defined corners and edges. Love or hate it, the ThinkPad 2 tablet lives up to its namesake.

The Ouya sets the bar low with its $99 price tag and its initially-free games. There are some good games, but not many, and they're hard to discover. Yet the system is a fascinating experiment and can be fun for those for whom $99 isn't much to plunk down. Read on for some of the hits and misses along with a look at the game lineup.

At a mere .66 inches thick and powerful enough to capably handle some of the most demanding games on the market, Razer's new 14-inch Blade might be the coolest piece of equipment I've ever played a PC game on. Crammed inside its sleek aluminium body is an Intel Core i7-4702HQ and Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M.

Company of Heroes 2 takes advantage of DirectX 11 but also supports DirectX 9, and Relic's proprietary Essence 3.0 engine has a mess load of new features. Our tests comprises nearly 30 graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia paired with an Intel Core i7-3960X to remove any CPU bottlenecks.

The SanDisk Extreme II series is aimed at enthusiasts, with initial models offering capacities of 120GB, 240GB and 480GB. The Extreme II features an in-house developed firmware, dumping the SandForce controller in favor of the new Marvell 88SS9187.

Seven years is a long time between wars, though, and now that we have a sequel, people are expecting a lot from this game, the first time Company of Heroes has ditched Western Europe for the Eastern Front. So what's new?

Previous 700 series cards have been heavy hitters. Assuming Nvidia doesn't throw us a curve ball, we expect the GTX 760 to deliver performance comparable to that of the HD 7950 with a price tag that's closer to that of most HD 7870s -- a situation that would invariably benefit anyone shopping for a mid-range GPU.

In Win's latest open-air chassis has to be their finest creation yet. The D-Frame is a limited edition aluminum pipe and tempered glass case that is unique and equally pricey. DIY'ers will be pleased nonetheless.

Gunpoint may be a stealth game, but Conway (the main player character) isn't some Sam Fisher-wannabe, crouching in the shadows and garroting unsuspecting guards. His methods are a bit flashier, and a hell of a lot of fun. Players line up his leap by holding down the left mouse button, sort of like taking aim in Tanks or Worms. Release, and sproiiing!

Last year Trinity picked up where Llano left off, providing an affordable package with enough processing speed for most users with powerful GPU performance (for integrated graphics). Now, little over 6 months down the road, AMD is updating their product lineup with Richland, a minor refresh that focuses on clock speed improvements and better power management.

So what is Haswell exactly? It is Intel's 4th generation Core architecture which will see a major refresh of the entire Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 product lineup in 2013. Today we'll be checking out the new HD 4600 Graphics which comes as part of the high-end Core i7-4770K desktop processor.

Much like a GTX 680 on steroids, the GeForce GTX 770 features the fastest GDDR5 memory we have ever seen at 7GHz. Memory at that clock rate is good for a peak bandwidth of 224GB/s, 16% more than the GTX 680. Therefore, technically if you could overclock a GTX 680 well enough you could create a GTX 770.

AMD are releasing their first Kabini based processors today with the launch of the A6-5200 and the A4-5000. Kabini will be AMD's first, and also the first ever, quad-core x86-based SoC. With the Kabini platform AMD is aiming to compete in the subnotebook, ultra-thin and small form factor markets.

Meet the Vertex 450, OCZ's latest addition to the Vertex SSD series based on a slightly modified version of the Barefoot 3 controller that is designed to be more cost effective. So how does the new Vertex drive fare against the best SSDs in the market including OCZ's own?

The new GeForce GTX 780 is based on a similar, albeit slightly cut down version of the Titan GPU, managing to keep many of the features that make the $1,000 graphics card great, such as the 384-bit memory bus.